The present invention relates to integrated circuit technology. More particularly, the present invention relates to integrated circuit devices, such as user-programmable integrated circuits, which employ intellectual property (IP), and to methods for controlling the use of intellectual property in individual ones of the integrated circuit devices.
The use of integrated circuit devices including user-programmable integrated circuits has become widespread in the electronics industry. The expanding use of user-programmable integrated circuits as well as other integrated circuits has created a new business model, wherein third-party vendors have created and offer for sale custom software, firmware, and configuration files for programmable circuits that provide custom functions (known as “IP”) that integrated circuit customers may purchase and load into the integrated circuit devices as a part of their circuit designs.
The growing use of IP in integrated circuit devices has given rise to a need to limit the use of the IP to authorized users; i.e., users who have paid a license fee for the privilege of incorporating the IP into their circuit designs. Misuse of IP includes outright piracy of IP for which no license fee has been paid to the third-party vendor, as well as “overbuilding” by programming the IP into a larger number of integrated circuit devices than is allowed under the licensing arrangement.
At least in the programmable integrated circuit field, the prior art has appreciated the problem of IP piracy and has provided some level of security for IP. Prior art solutions from user-programmable integrated circuit vendors, such as Xilinx and Altera, have, for example, provided that the IP is processed in an electronic design automation (EDA) tool flow which nominally maintains the confidentiality of the IP. Some of the schemes allow running the IP for a short time or while tethered to a computer. None of the existing prior art binds the license to individual devices the way the present invention does, nor provides for autonomous enforcement.
In some prior-art processes, a flow takes in encrypted register transfer level (RTL) files for the third-party IP and adds it to the user design. The schemes for enforcement vary from none to requiring the device to be attached to a programmer via a physical connection. It is thought that one vendor can limit the use of the IP from the time of reset by counting clock pulses, but there appears to be no scheme that can control IP on a per device basis with anything as flexible as the IP license certificate and enforcement block according to the present invention.